While driving for Hayter Mowers, one of the other drivers, cannot remember his name, only that he was related to my wife (that is wife No 2) anyway he had been hit head on by an army lorry somewhere around Alton Hants and was in hospital down that way while they rebuilt his face five of us went down to see him one saturday and took his wife as well, anyway back to the story, gets in the yard a few days later and was loaded for South Coast area and told to go into a garage and bring his motor back on piggyback, how the hell do I get the unit on the my trailer said I, they have a ramp and will load it for you, ok, seems sorted, Wrong, gets to the garage and their ramp is miles to small to load his unit and the motor was not driveable so it was on to plan 2, drag unit to a council depot down the road who had a ramp, right line his unit up with the ramp, drop my trailer and chock wheels, (no spring brake in those days of Scammell couplings) run a rope from my unit through the front of my trailer and onto his unit and tow said unit onto my trailer, gets so far then realises that with those Scammell couplings the wheels were not set far apart and unit and trailer could overbalance so had to stop with it half on and half off my trailer, so I coupled up and got the unit pushed on by the council workers, tied it down and brought it home. The driver did come back to work after around 4 months, at least they did bring him to a hospital closer to his home when they had built a cage round his face to hold it all together.
Think that was the worst job I ever had as his unit was crawling with maggots what with the blood soaked into the seat and on the floor, the following morning I unbolted the seats and burnt them and got the power washer out and cleaned the cab out only to get a rocket as the insurance agent wanted to see the motor for the claim, explained the maggots etc and got an apology. Why did I get all the best jobs■■?
Had never had a vehicle on the trailer before so had a quick learning curve on how to rope (no chains) a unit on as it had no brakes as the engine was pushed back around 4 feet.